Next-generation organic nanozymes offer safe, cost-effective solution for agricultural and food industries

Nanozymes are synthetic materials that have enzyme-like catalytic properties, and they are broadly used for biomedical purposes, such as disease diagnostics.

However, inorganic nanozymes are generally toxic, expensive, and complicated to produce, making them unsuitable for the agricultural and food industries.

A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign research team has developed organic-material-based nanozymes that are non-toxic, environmentally friendly, and cost-effective. In two new studies, they introduce next-generation organic nanozymes and explore a point-of-use platform for molecule detection in agricultural products.

"The first generation of organic-compound-based (OC) nanozymes had some minor drawbacks, so our research group worked to make improvements. The previous OC nanozymes required the use of particle stabilizing polymers having repeatable functional groups, which assured stability of the nanozyme's nanoscale framework, but didn't achieve a sufficiently small particle size," said lead author Dong Hoon Lee.

In the new iteration, they used a core amino acid (L- alanine) and polyethylene glycol as constituent materials and a novel particle synthesis technique that allowed them to bring the particle size down to less than 100 nanometers..

Zdroj obrázku: Lee et al. (2025), Chemical Engineering Journal.